Change is a fact of life in sales organizations. Sales reps come and go, sales channels change, products are added and removed and distribution channels are updated.
For example, take the estimated numbers of annual turnover among U.S. salespeople, which run as high as 34.7%. In an enterprise with 1000 salespeople, this translates to over 340 sales positions that change yearly.
As any change management expert will tell you, handling change effectively requires close management attention, communication, training and many other activities. But in the world of sales, there’s an additional element to consider - data. To continue the example above, the turnover of 340 sales reps is associated with volumes of data that must be updated and adjusted, sometimes retroactively - data related to sales territories, quotas and sales transactions.
4 Key Requirements for Effective Management of Change
Handling change in the context of sales compensation requires agile IT systems that anticipate changes, automate processes and help sales operations, compensation administrators, analysts, and sales managers effectively handle all pieces of the sales compensation machinery - territories, quotas, compensation plans, sales crediting, payment processing and reporting.
Here are four requirements that will help manage change effectively, eliminate manual work, and enable accurate, on-time payments.
- Streamlined territory and quota updates. Particularly with large sales forces with complex territory and account structures, it’s important that you can view and easily update multi-level, multi-dimensional sales hierarchies and accounts. If your company requires authorizations and approvals on quota or territory changes, you’d also want a facilitating mechanism to eliminate back-and-forth mails.
- Automatic data propagation. Handling frequent changes requires automation. For example, when you update accounts or sales territories following personnel changes or new sales channels, you’d like your changes to be reflected in sales crediting calculations, without having to manually manipulate or export/import data.
- Prompt introduction of compensation plans. According to the Alexander group, 90% of companies make some changes to their compensation plans each year. This means you should be able to modify and launch compensation plans, SPIFFS and promotions quickly, regardless of their complexity. Business users should be able to do this independently, without the need of help from IT or the software vendor.
- Speedy sales transaction processing. Frequent data changes demand that you can quickly process and re-calculate transactions or clawbacks to be able to pay and report and data accurately.
For more information on change and learn how NICE Sales Performance Management (SPM) can help adapt to change in sales organizations, click here.